Willow O'Neal

Name: Willow O'Neal

Gender: Female

Age: 18

Grade: Senior

School: George Hunter High School

Hobbies and Interests: Video games (specifically RPGs), painting, psychology, cooking and baking

Appearance: Willow O’Neal is a skinny (110 pounds) and small (5’4’’) girl. She is diminutive in size due to an eating disorder. Even though she is currently going through treatment and following a meal plan, her weight isn’t a stable number, often dropping and increasing by a couple of pounds every couple of weeks. Her limbs are bony and thin, and most of her height is in her legs; her arms are similar, with bony and veiny hands and thin arms.

Her face, due to her recovery, started to look healthier. Her Caucasian and Native-American heritage means she has a natural slight olive complexion but due suffering from an eating disorder, it has become paler and looks a bit unhealthy but it is getting progressively better. While she still has a bony nose and a sharp chin, her cheeks appear to be fuller and she looks more tired than she used to. Her eyebrows are normally coarse, she plucked them regularly to make them look a bit finer. Her eyes are a blueish-green with almond eyes. She often has dark circles naturally which she hides with makeup, along with the rest of her skin imperfection like scars and acne on her face. Her makeup is often light with concealer, lip gloss and eyeliner to help with her poor self-image. She has no visible tattoos or piercing, but has dark self-harm scars on her inner thighs, upper arms and belly, either using makeup and clothing to hide the traces of it.

She has wavy pale brown hair going down her shoulders, she tries her best to take care of it even though it is vulnerable due to her eating disorder. It is brittle and breaks easily. Her nails also suffer from her eating disorder, they are a yellow tint and fragile. She covers them in black nail polish daily. She has a lot of visible blue veins which she hides with ample clothes or makeup depending on their location.

Willow’s outfits depend on the mood of the day. When she dislikes how her body looks, she wears pants and long sleeved shirts. The shirts she wears most of the time vary in colors and style. They are often shirts of singers like Marina and the Diamonds or Lana Del Rey, or bands like She Wants Revenge. She has some dresses, most of them are black. They are mainly short sleeved dresses that end above her knees, she only wears them with tights because of her insecurities related to her legs. Other than that, Willow is a lazy girl who just picks up the first piece of clothing she sees, often wearing the same outfit several days in a row just with different underwear or sweaters.

On the day of the abduction, Willow was wearing a short sleeved black shirt with an abstract drawing of an eye in the middle in white with a red cardigan. She wore black jeans with scratches on her knees and thigh with a pair of brown heeled boots reaching her ankles. She was wearing a simple black choker and her default makeup with lip gloss, concealer and eyeliner.

Biography: Willow O’Neal was an accident from the union of a New York city couple composed of Tamara O’Neal and Mario Kline in 1999. Mario, unable to deal with the responsibility with the possibility of raising a kid at the age of 23, broke up with Tamara. Tamara, devastated, went to live with her parents at the age of 24 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Tamara’s parents, Gertrude and Harold O’Neal took the role of caretakers for her first years of her life while Tamara attempted to finish her college education. Mario sent his share of child support without meeting his daughter until she was 14.

Willow, at an early age, felt unwanted. She didn’t know her dad, her mom was absent, and her grandparents treated her strangely. While her caretakers loved her, they saw her as a disappointment as she ruined Tamara’s successful college career. It led to several episodes of Willow feeling rejected and ignored when she tried to receive approbation from them. They would also openly talk about their disgust about her biological dad, often repeating in front of her, mentioning it was his fault that she was here, making her feel horrible.

From the age of one to six, Willow was principally raised by her grandparents. Her mom lived on campus, visiting her daughter during certain weekends. Luckily, Harold retired from his job as an accountant with quite a fortune so the trio was able to live comfortably. Willow wasn’t an active child, she was quiet and often spent her days playing with her dolls or watching television. She started displaying the first signs of mental health problems early on, often being caught biting and scratching herself, and having nightmares. Meanwhile, her mom met Willow’s would-be-step-dad, Lawrence Millers, during her studies to become a pharmacist. After two years of friendship, the two started dating.

Tragedy struck when Willow turned 7, Gertrude, age 59, tripped on a toy, striking her head on the corner of a table, leading to her death. Willow was the first person to discover her body, she was there as Gertrude laid dying in front of her, traumatizing her. Willow still has nightmares of her grandmother dying and she continues to feel guilt over her death due to panicking and not calling an ambulance. Gertrude’s death was ruled an accident, and her burial quickly followed. Harold painfully recovered from the death of his wife, still feeling resentment at his granddaughter since Gertrude had tripped on a misplaced toy. Tamara, grief-stricken, took a break from her studies to take care of her daughter and her father and mourn the death of her mother.

Harold, due to the depression he suffered after the death of his wife, started become a bitter and rude individual. While he was once a father figure to Willow, he became more of a bully, often tormenting her for mistakes. Harold’s health also took a decline, as a chronic Type 1 diabetes sufferer, he started taking less and less care of himself. Willow felt guilty for that too, leading to more confused feelings of self-loathing early on in her life.

The family situation became better when Tamara introduced Lawrence to Willow. Originally, Willow found it weird, getting adjusted to having a new male authority figure took time. She, however, found Lawrence to be genuinely nice, enjoying his presence more than Harold’s. After Tamara secured a job after her studies, she announced that she and Lawrence would live together and Willow would join them in their condo. However, Tamara didn’t want to leave her father alone, but she also didn’t want him to live with her new family, so she recommended visiting possible nursing homes, but Harold bitterly refused. Not wanting to cause anymore problems Tamara left the house with Willow and moved in with Lawrence, now living in a smaller place but feeling much more comfortable. Lawrence legally adopted Willow, becoming her legal father.

Elementary school wasn’t memorable academically. Willow often had average grades. What really stood out of her years in elementary school was the fact that she alienated herself from others. She didn’t struggle to make friends at first but her feeling of guilt became overwhelming with time, often just being a face in the background in friend groups. She wasn’t really close to anyone and spent most of her time alone, working on things on her own.

Since her mom and her step-dad were both pharmacists, they were able to secure a strong income, putting them in an advantageous spot. Lawrence, a lifelong geek, introduced his step-daughter to video games. He bought her a DS for her tenth birthday with Pokemon Pearl. She immediately got hooked on it, she loved taking cute critters and raising them to battle other people. Video games quickly became an easy way for Willow to ignore her problems, especially after waking up from nightmares of her deceased grandmother or when she had a bad day at school.

Her mom felt bad for neglecting during her daughter’s early years. She tried to compensate by spoiling her but the damage was already done and Willow feared that her mom would abandon her again. She often questioned her mother’s actions, wondering if she would come back when she went on business trips. Willow was much more close to her step-dad than her mom during that time of her life, she felt closer to him since they shared a lot of interests. She often watched him play video games when he was home, and he helped her when it came to homework.

Middle school, was, however very different from elementary school when it came to grades, it was actually quite the opposite. What used to work for her, stopped functioning and she was now struggling in classes such as mathematics and the sciences. She managed to make friends in her classes, people found her interesting and, on the outside, she appeared to be a sweet and nice girl who could be very quiet but could still help out whenever. She was surprised people enjoyed being her friends, it helped get her through rough moments, especially in 6th grade when she broke up with her first boyfriend. Something her friends did not help was with school, however. The pressure of performing coming from herself became increasingly harder to handle, often feeling she wasn’t good enough and with feelings of worthlessness becoming commonplace.

She resorted to cutting to relieve herself from some of the pressure she felt which temporarily worked but ashamed her, feeling that she couldn’t reach out for help. She cut with the razor blade in pencil sharpeners, throwing away the husks and keeping the blades for cutting, she cleaned them rarely before self-harming since she was often too overwhelmed to take some safety precautions. She managed to keep it hidden through rituals of hiding her tools and throwing away the evidences like the bloody tissues.

Self-harming was quickly not enough to contain her inner angst and she added restricting food to the list. It started by her going vegetarian then slowly cutting away type of foods. She lost several pounds quickly, and she was encouraged by her group of friends saying she looked better. Her weight reached a dangerously low 90 pounds which led to questions from her worried friends. She however continued to claim she was naturally skinny. It was harder to hide it from her parents, but she found ways such as hiding food in her clothes and in her hair and when she was forced to eat, she would purge in the bathroom.

In 8th grade, Harold was found dead in his home, having died from complications due to his Type 1 diabetes. A short investigation led to the recovery of a suicide note that revealed that Harold let himself die due to the sadness of his wife’s death along with the financial struggles he was going through. Tamara, now an orphan, became severely depressed, mourning the death of her father. The burial happened three weeks after his death. Willow’s feelings of guilt and anguish became increasingly painful. She often broke down and cried when she was alone. It was two months after the announcement, the 24th of November 2013, that Willow was found unconscious by Tamara in her room after overdosing on Seroquel out of accumulated feelings of guilt. She got the Seroquel from her mother’s personal medicine cabinet in the bathroom, simply taking the first bottle she found and impulsively taking them all. She was quickly sent to a hospital for treatment and stayed in a near vegetative state, recovering from her suicide attempt, until the end of November.

It was in December that Willow was admitted after her suicide attempt to the local mental ward. It didn’t take a lot for Willow to open up, her assigned psychologist and psychiatrist, Dr. Marie Tiz and Dr. Melanie Thompson, approached her with candid questions and Willow felt no need to lie to them, feeling release from her emotional anguish. A quick evaluation diagnosed her with anorexia nervosa and the possibility of a mood disorder such as depression or perhaps anxiety. She also had a dietitian which she didn’t like because he would often increase the amount of food she would need to eat every meal which often led to her getting warnings for screaming and insulting him. Losing control over her life, or at least her disorder, became hard to handle. Willow often attempted to self-harm at the hospital but she was often unable to do so due to lack of supplies.

At the hospital, Willow was frankly bored. Her parents visited her once a week trying to encourage their daughter to try to get better, the nurses and her dietitian would often get on her nerves due to their severe regulations, and she struggled to connect with the other patients. She felt alienated and it made her more depressed than before. She took up painting in art therapy after trying drawing and knitting, often painting abstract figures. She didn’t really like it at first, but it grew on her. She started painting the view from the art room and herself. Painting helped her feel less bored during the weeks she spent at the hospital, it helped her put her mind on something and avoid thinking of things that stressed her such as her increasing weight and the schoolwork she was missing.

One week into the hospitalization, she was allowed to start doing assignments teachers sent her. They were delivered by her parents every Saturday, she started to apply herself in it. She actually enjoyed having only one hour of school then having the rest of the day off to do what she wanted. While she quite hated being locked up and having little control on what she ate or did, she managed to find it bearable eventually. Being away from her school friends, however, made her feel quite lonely. Only family was allowed to visit her so friends didn’t get to visit during her hospital stay. Using social media and emails was also prohibited so she couldn’t contact them that way either, she felt like she was losing her friends and it didn’t help her morale as the days ticked down until Christmas.

There was an incident where a fellow patient insulted Willow by saying she was ugly which resulted in a fight where Willow broke the girl’s nose in the girl’s bathroom. In seclusion while writing an apology to the girl, Willow realized that her disorder had taken a severe toll on her body. Her skin was now yellow and pale, her bones were visible, blue veins started to appear everywhere, her nails and hair became brittle, and she realized that her constant fatigue was probably due to her disorder. That moment of realization sparked her recovery, three weeks into her hospitalization.

She was able to go home for Christmas after gaining about ten pounds. She was surprised to see her friends hadn’t abandoned her because when they learned she was home, they visited her and told her what she missed during the time she was home. Her friends were supportive of her, some of them felt bad for complimenting her when she was losing weight but Willow reassured them it wasn’t their fault. Her friends weren’t the only one to visit her, however, her biological father also did. He got into contact with Tamara, and she half-heartedly accepted to schedule up a meeting. They met at a coffee shop, Mario introduced himself to his daughter. On the outside, Willow appeared to be happy but inside she didn’t know what to do, this man that had abandoned her mom was now trying to make amends with her. He told her he was currently married with three kids and he would be happy to introduce them to her, which she found strange because she barely knew this man and she wondered why he was acting like that. The meeting became even more awkward when Mario started to talk about Tamara and his relationship with her, and the fact he felt guilty for leaving them. Willow’s feeling of anguish suddenly came back, and she wanted to hurt her biological father, feeling like throwing her cup of coffee at him. She felt like it was her fault she lived this life of pain and that he deserved to feel guilty and hurt, just like she did. She decided to excuse herself before having doing a rash decision, and leave the meeting, saying she would talk to him later, heading home for the Christmas party.

The celebration of Christmas expanded Willow’s video games collection. She received a 3DS with several games, but her favorite ended up being Fire Emblem Awakening. It reminded her when she played Pokemon games when she was younger, picking the characters she prefers and pairing them up together. She enjoyed being able to make an avatar based on her and being able to make decisions affecting the game. What she preferred the most was able to marry another character and creating a story based on what she wanted. Another game she took a liking to is Bravely Default. She enjoyed the aesthetic, having the possibility to adapt and transform her party at will depending on the situation. Planning the best strategies for battles in advance felt good, giving her a feeling of accomplishment she enjoyed quite a bit. Since she plays most of her game for the story and a little bit for the gameplay, she plays them on the easiest difficulty to avoid getting bothered with hard things.

Two weeks later, January 4th 2014, she was back in the hospital but not for long. The doctors noticed she was in better shape than before and less depressed than she used to be. She revealed to her psychologist that while her suicidal and self-destructive ideas persisted, she tried her best to either ignore them or talk them out with people. They decided to keep her another couple of days before discharging her, adjusting her Zoloft to a regular dose of 100mg a day and bi-monthly therapy. She disliked that she needed to continue to see a dietitian but reluctantly agreed to get out of the hospital as fast she could.

Her school year continued where it left off: struggling in her classes. Her teachers, however, knowing of her conditions went easier on her. She was discharged from doing physical activities by her doctor in Health and Physical Education due to her eating disorder and the possibility of fainting, though she continued to assist to the class, often working on homework or studying for its Health part. Other than that, teachers help her to succeed through after school lessons because of what she missed. Willow was able to gain back her subpar average of C’s, sometime getting B’s.

The rest of the year went smoothly, her friends helped her when she needed them and vice-versa. She sometime lashed out against people who misunderstood her, but her friends were often there to stop her from going further. She became a sister figure to her friends, often helping them out when they had problems and questions with their own mental health or their family. She quickly realized she enjoyed doing that, talking to people and trying to fix their problems by conversation. It was then she started to muse about the idea of becoming a psychologist, or at least some kind of counselor.

She graduated from middle school and enrolled to George Hunter High School, following most her friends. She wasn’t particularly eager for that, hearing a lot about the extra course load along with AP classes and things like that. She realized her laziness and lack of motivations to put efforts in things would probably impair her success, but she was too lazy to fix that.

She continued painting and playing video games. She continued to paint landscapes from the window of her room. She painted the city streets and night sky, principally. Sometimes she painted herself or characters from video games when she felt like mixing things up. Painting wasn’t something she felt like sharing with others, it was really more of a means to handle her inner anguish. Video games was her principal hobby however. She received a laptop during the summer for her homework during high school, and she immediately started downloading emulators to play older games. She played the older versions of Fire Emblem, but also of Pokemon and Final Fantasy. She tried her hands at platforming games but she didn’t like them as much as the story driven games.

Therapy with her psychologist, Dr. Munch, was going relatively well. She didn’t miss encounters on purpose, but she sometimes lied to him on purpose to get the conversation going but she rarely had a malicious intent. She asked a lot of questions about his school career, asking him about his degrees and how he became a psychologist. She learned that she would need a Ph.D. to become a certified psychologist which was a thought that horrified her, she didn’t see herself getting a bachelor’s degree. She quietly mused about it, decided to maybe settle on a less paid counseling job, maybe as a social worker.

High school meant she met new people, and with that, her social circle expanded. Willow was still a quiet girl that could appear as odd, and rumors ran about her struggles with mental health. She tried her best not to let them affect her but she often felt the need of clearing things up about the things that happened to her. Most of her friends were people from middle school, sticking with her like they did in the past. Her new friends were mainly based on her classes and people she sat with in the study hall or at lunch.

Academically, she started doing better in Art class. Her experiences with painting and several others medium she dabbled with in art therapy gave her more knowledge than some of her peers. She didn’t like doing art for a grade, but since she often got a good grade on it she didn’t mind. Social sciences were her second strongest point. She took AP Psychology as a challenge for herself, and while it was a hard task to keep up with her coursework, she genuinely appreciated the class. In other topics like mathematics, languages and physical education, however, she had a C average. Despite her overall low average throughout her classes, she is happy to have higher grades than she used to in middle school.

Her biological father visited his daughter several times in high school, trying to persuade her to visit him and his family. She was still bitter, however, from the fact he abandoned her when she was younger, often refusing and blaming her homework. She went over once during the Summer, meeting his wife, Karen, and his three kids, Marianne, Anthony, and Charles, spending a week there. She found the experience boring and awkward, especially due to the fact she felt like an alien in this new place with people she barely knew. She is still in contact with Marianne, however, often playing online games together or communicating through Facebook.

Psychology grew to be her favorite topic in discussions. She enjoyed knowing why people did certain things and the topic of mental illnesses. She found herself weird at first, often searching up about mental health issues in her free time when she was bored, but she quickly dissociated herself from that point of view, deciding she was only curious. She often watches documentaries about mental health problem since she feels like she’s directly learning about the topic and, meanwhile, on herself.

Her own mental and physical health are doing much better now. She isn’t as weak as she used to be physically, but she still struggles quite a bit and often feels weak and dizzy, she faints at least once a month. Her psychological problems are often addressed under several angles with her psychologist during psychotherapy, discussing reasons why she might have developed certain self-destructive behaviors. One of the reasons discussed about was the death of her grandparents, which she still feels greatly responsible of. Her guilt sometimes leads to short episodes of thoughts of self-harming but most of the time she is capable of handling her impulses to hurt herself.

Willow loves her parents. Tamara and Lawrence are very important figures to her, she wants to please them to the best of her abilities. She still feels closer to her step-father than her mother, feeling like she could have done more to protect her when Willow was younger, but her bitterness is slowly dissipating. She still struggles with her feelings that she was abandoned on a regular basis but she manages them through things she learned in therapy.

In their home, they rarely eat dinner together as a family, but Lawrence often cooks for his step-daughter and they eat together in the kitchen. Willow started to learn how to cook, learning from her step-father. She isn’t good but she is trying her best, she is able to cook herself meals she enjoys and she sometimes cooks for her family. She likes baking but she finds it much harder to do than cooking, so she tries her hands at simple things like cookies. She started cooking things for her own lunches, considering becoming a vegetarian for a bit, but she dismissed it because she was scared she might become underweight again. Like most of her hobbies, she keeps it to herself, rarely sharing her cooking to other people other than her parents.

Her biological father stays in contact with his daughter through Facebook. She is spiteful toward him, she doesn’t want to see him or interact with him, but she still does for various reasons. She makes the effort due to her mother pushing her. Also, she is also scared that her friend, Marianne, might be abandoned by their father. She visits them sometimes, just to keep an eye on her biological father. She tries her best to be kind to Mario, but often feel the need to mouth him off when he talks about his guilt for leaving her.

She is principally attracted to guys. She broke up with her boyfriend from middle school after he became considerably cold to her after her hospitalization in 8th grade. She has been single since. While she knows she would enjoy dating someone again, she is scared her self-destructive tendencies, even if they are less bad than they were before, might drive them away from her again. Also, her perception of her image also makes her feel unwanted, feeling grossed out by it. Depending on the day, her self-image can be very negative, leading to her missing classes. The truancy was noted by her teachers, but beyond a warning nothing was done due to it only happening rarely and because of Willow’s active efforts to catch up.

Willow still continues to paint, albeit a bit less. She still paints a lot of landscapes but started getting better at portraits, especially of herself and of video game characters. She listens to music when she paints, often by solo female artists or rock bands. She uses music to inspire the mood of her art. Her paintings are often hung against her walls or set in closet. She is starting to share her art a bit, showing it to friends. Most of them are surprised because they didn’t know about her interest in painting, often thinking it was limited to art class.

Willow continues to enjoy predominantly RPG’s and strategy games. She is currently playing Final Fantasy IX on her laptop, enjoying the overall aesthetic and storyline. She also plays hacks and mods of Pokemon and Fire Emblem games. She still dislikes hard games, often cheating in emulators if she finds them too unforgiving, but she is making an effort to persevere. It rarely works though since she often drops games when they get too difficult for her handle. Marianne got her to play Overwatch with her, she prefers the support characters like Mercy. She isn’t good at them but she enjoys playing with her friend.

Most of her current friends know about her struggle with mental illnesses, but she tries her best to stay happy and composed in front of them. She lies to her friends so that they don’t worry about her, but she wishes she could be open about her problems. She is constantly scared her problems might make them leave. She can lash out when she feels people are criticizing her, earning the reputation of a sweet and quiet girl who becomes aggressive when cornered.

She regularly struggles with her eating disorder. Not as much with the symptoms, but more the side effects of it since they get in the way of her daily life. For example, she knows about her weakened bones due to the low bone density which makes her scared of breaking a bone. While she hasn’t broken any yet, she is nonetheless scared of the pain it might inflict to her. It still affects her mentally, making her feel like she is taking up more space than others, making her feel uncomfortable in crowded places.

She wants to go in the field of psychology but due to her poor grades she was rejected from the college she applied to. Instead, she is now planning to get a major in social science at Chattanooga State Community College then applying for a bachelor’s degree in counseling in university, then maybe continue for master’s. University is a scary prospect, but she thinks she might be to handle it if she can work on her laziness. She would enjoy to work in the field of psychology, especially helping youths with mental disorders. Other than that, she is planning to keep living in her home, feeling that living in a dorm or away from her support system would probably affect her for the worse.

Advantages: Willow is a petite girl, she could use that to hide in places. Her years in therapy might help her to cope with some of the stressful situations the island. Her interests in strategy games could be helpful since she enjoys planning ahead and figuring the best way to do something, which might apply to the program. Finally, since she is perceived as a quiet and sweet girl who can be forgettable, she might be able to lay under the radar.

Disadvantages: She is easily offended by others, especially by criticisms, which could lead to her lashing out and losing allies. She is also weak physically due to her eating disorder, she is prone to fainting and she has little stamina. She also small, she can easily be overpowered by other students. She is also prone to more injuries due to her already damaged body because of her low bone density. Since she is currently medicated due to her mental health problems, the withdrawal from her Zoloft may cause flu-like symptoms.

Designated Number: Female student No. 008

---

Designated Weapon: Roll of duct tape

Conclusion: With enough imagination, we've given you what is in my opinion the single best weapon in the game. Without the imagination or know-how, though, you may as well just tape yourself to a tree and wait to be killed. - Dennis Lourvey

'The above biography is as written by Lore. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Lore

Kills: 

Killed By: 

Collected Weapons: Roll of duct tape (assigned weapon), H&K P11 (from Faith Marshal-Mackenzie), Stun Gun (from Sierra Cook)

Allies: Sierra Cook, Katrina Lavell

Enemies: Faith Marshal-Mackenzie, Marco Volker

Mid-game Evaluation: Willow used some of her tape to make an improvised shank by breaking some ceramic in one of the Western Housing buildings. She already had a plan: one kill, then lay low, but before she could get any further progress commotion in another part of the house alerted her. She found a scene: Sierra Cook confronting Charelle Chernyshyova and an unconscious Felix Rees, the formermost with a drawn taser. Willow stalked closer, intent on surveying the scene, until she ended up almost outside the house, musing that she could have been misconstrued as Sierra's partner in crime. A gunshot sounded out in the distance, she quickly abandoned pretenses and went up to alert the others, now slightly shaken herself.

Post-Game Evaluation: 

Memorable Quotes:

Threads
Below is a list of threads containing Willow, in chronological order.

The Past: V7 Pregame: Prom: The Trip: V7:
 * rot
 * A Physiological Demonstration with the Vivisection of a Dog
 * Speaking in Colors
 * Rain in July
 * A Delicate but Grotesque Girl
 * Marie's Eve
 * compensated
 * Diamond district in the Jag'
 * The Name is Bond, James Bond
 * Room 815: Interesting...
 * LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BOYZ WHERE WE DROPPIN’
 * Book of Bad Decisions
 * See You On The Road, Skag!
 * Left, Right, Left, We All Fall Down
 * Freedom is a fleeting dream, an ephemeral hope, a transient wish in the wind.
 * The Girls Made of Soot, Blood and Plastic
 * Beat the Devil Out of It
 * Made My Decision to Test My Limits
 * Party Like It's 1999

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Willow O'Neal. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''